Favourite blogs

I've been thinking about Nigel Colborn's shoes for nearly six months. In case you're worried, no, I have not developed some weird footwear fetish nor have I started stalking the horticultural aristocracy, it was just that on his ever-entertaining silvertreedaze blog, Mr Colborn had fashioned a sort of floral tribute using his gardening shoes and I thought I would like to do something similar myself.

In my mind, I was keen to plant up some lovely old Brogues with a few sempervivums. But, given my husband rarely seems to wear anything but ridiculous Converse-style footwear, I came up short on that one. However, I did get some rather fetching new wellies earlier in the year which meant I was able to retire my old green pair that had sprung a leak

I know it's November, and some of you Christmas purists will think this is too early, but quite frankly I don't care. It's getting chilly outside, I've had enough of bulb planting and I'm very much in need of a good old-fashioned mid-winter festival. So here we go, my top 10 garden gifts for kids this Christmas*

The rainfall here has reached Biblical levels recently. There are only so many times you can say 'well, it's good for the garden' before you run the risk of death by cliche. However, after getting myself ready to send out a white dove in search of dry ground, the rain ceased yesterday and there was even a cameo appearance by the sun

An old press contact of mine wrote to a number of ex-PRs this morning on Facebook pondering why so many of us chose to become garden designers. My answer was that gardening is particularly good therapy to cope with years of abuse from journalists

I'm not very good at top 10 lists. I didn't even manage my list of five celebrities that, you know, you're allowed to, well... didn't you see that episode of Friends? Anyway, I only ever get as far as George Clooney and John Cusack before I run out of inspiration. I think, as Nick Hornby ably demonstrated in High Fidelity, lists are really a boy thing. Still, if I did manage a list of top 10 gardens for kids, last week I would have found a new entry - Hampton Court Gardens. Read More...